Space

A study on dozens of galaxies within several billion light years of our own has revealed black holes that far exceed our expectations on just how big these monsters can grow. The discovery not only helps us better understand the evolution of our Universe’s building blocks, it leaves us with a new intriguing question –

Get a good look at Jupiter’s Great Red Spot while you can. The giant storm as we know it today is shrinking, and it might fade into memory within your lifetime. NASA’s US$1 billion Juno probe took stunning photos of the Great Red Spot in July 2017 – the closest images we’ve ever gotten of

It’s been a conflicting few months on this blue orb of ours, but nothing puts life into perspective like a photo taken by a probe literally millions of miles from home. OSIRIS-REx, an asteroid-sampling spacecraft, took the photo below as part of an engineering test on January 17 2018. The spacecraft was moving away

It’s been barely two weeks since SpaceX successfully launched the first Falcon Heavy into orbit, and many are curious as to where it and its unconventional passenger are right now. Instead of sending something boring as the Heavy’s first payload, SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk launched his own Tesla Roadster. On board is

Cara Lucy O’Connor has a concern. Pluto used to be one of the nine planets in the solar system, and it isn’t anymore. That’s not right, said the little girl from Ireland. So Cara, with the help of her teacher, wrote a letter to NASA hoping to persuade the space agency to “make Pluto a

Since NASA’s early days, periods in space have been a strange and mysterious topic for engineers. Countless things go into planning a launch and until Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983, tampons and sanitary napkins were never part of that process. After wanting to send an overly generous supply

The International Space Station is a science facility, so it’s no surprise that experiments occasionally fail. Most of the time, however, they don’t involve weird robots – like Robonaut, the robotic astronaut NASA sent up with the STS-133 mission in 2011. The golden-helmeted figure has been out of action since 2015 after its hardware

Black holes don’t just sit there munching away constantly on the space around them. Eventually they run out of nearby matter and go quiet, lying in wait until a stray bit of gas passes by. Then a black hole devours again, belching out a giant jet of particles. And now scientists have captured one

Researchers have directly observed the scattering electrons behind the shifting patterns of light called pulsating auroras, confirming models of how charged solar winds interact with our planet’s magnetic field. With those same winds posing a threat to technology, it’s comforting to know we’ve got a sound understanding of what’s going on up there. The

Thanks to a long-duration solar flare belched out by the Sun earlier this week, Earth is buckling down for a geomagnetic storm at the higher latitudes. On 12 February, a relatively mild C-class solar flare occurred, accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME), sending plasma and electromagnetic radiation out into space – some of it

It’s the darnedest thing, guys. Remember that Tesla owned by Elon Musk that SpaceX cavalierly launched into space last week? Well, it turns out that might not be the last we see of it. In fact, according to a new analysis of the Roadster’s orbital trajectory, that stylish hunk of red metal, rubber, ‘Starman’,

The number of exoplanets has risen by almost 100, as an international team of astronomers confirms a new batch found in data captured as part of the K2 mission – the NASA Kepler telescope’s new lease on life. They have been analysing the first batch of K2 data, and have just announced the discovery

A week after the successful launch of the Falcon Heavy, currently the world’s most powerful rocket, SpaceX has analysed what went wrong, and Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to explain why the core booster did not land as it was supposed to. The simultaneous landing of Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters was like a

A new technique for measuring the mass of galaxies has been applied to our closest galactic neighbour – and it has found that the Andromeda galaxy is roughly the same size as the Milky Way, and not two to three times bigger as was previously thought. This means, when the two galaxies merge in

Roughly half a century ago, Cornell astronomer Frank Drake conducted Project Ozma, the first systematic SETI survey at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. Since that time, scientists have conducted multiple surveys in the hopes of find indications of “technosignatures” – i.e. evidence of technologically-advanced life (such as radio communications).

Elon Musk’s personal Tesla might have gotten all the headlines during SpaceX’s historic rocket launch last week, but the Falcon Heavy also carried a second, secret payload almost nobody knew about. Stashed inside the midnight-cherry Roadster was a mysterious, small object designed to last for millions (perhaps billions) of years – even in extreme

The tumbling roll of the cigar-shaped ‘Oumuamua could have been the result of a collision with another object. And, according to astronomers, it’s going to carry on tumbling for at least a billion years into the future, providing it doesn’t crash or collide again. The first known object to enter our Solar System from

The NASA New Horizons probe just set a new interstellar exploration record, taking pictures from further out in space than ever before – it snapped the shots you see above some 6.12 billion kilometres (3.79 billion miles) away from Earth. That’s about 6 million kilometres (3.7 million miles) further out than the Voyager 1

That orbiting lump of rock we call the Moon is thought to have been formed by a giant object smashing into Earth’s crust, and a new study has revealed more about how the Moon might have slowly retreated from Earth around 4 billion years ago. The dynamic simulation model paints a picture of a

Four years ago, a monster sunspot complex broke a solar record. As astronomers have just figured out, it was the source of the strongest magnetic field ever measured on the surface of the Sun. It was, researchers at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan concluded after five days of analysis, caused by gas outflow

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, currently the most powerful launch system on Earth, roared into the sky on Tuesday afternoon atop a pillar of smoke. The rocket’s three reusable boosters lifted the vehicle skyward, sending company founder Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster on a journey toward Mars orbit. Musk was worried that the experimental 23-story

You’ve probably been on the edge of your seat wondering what the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system has been up to. Now we have four new studies that have probed the planets and its star, and found that they definitely bear further investigation in our search for extraterrestrial life. According to four international teams, planets in

When NASA, pretty much every scientist, and all of the available evidence doesn’t convince you that we are on a globular planet, apparently the only thing to try is to leave Earth to find out for yourself. But Mike Hughes, the infamous flat-Earth conspiracy theorist, is currently Earth-bound for at least a little bit longer.

Elon Musk is getting ready to launch his own shiny red sports car to Mars orbit. On Tuesday afternoon, SpaceX is set to launch its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, from a pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The rocket – the biggest and most powerful system SpaceX has ever built –

In an incredible world first, astrophysicists have detected multiple planets in another galaxy, ranging from masses as small as the Moon to ones as great as Jupiter. Given how difficult it is to find exoplanets even within our Milky Way galaxy, this is no mean feat. Researchers at the University of Oklahoma achieved this thanks

In an incredible world first, astrophysicists have detected multiple planets in another galaxy, ranging from masses as small as the Moon to ones as great as Jupiter. Given how difficult it is to find exoplanets even within our Milky Way galaxy, this is no mean feat. Researchers at the University of Oklahoma achieved this thanks

On February 2, a spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts on the ISS was supposed to be a regular six-and-a-half hour mission to replace an electronics box for a communications antenna. But not everything went as planned – which required extra time, and ultimately a new spacewalk record. At around the seven hour mark, the expedition commander

On February 2, a spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts on the ISS was supposed to be a regular six-and-a-half hour mission to replace an electronics box for a communications antenna. But not everything went as planned – which required extra time, and ultimately a new spacewalk record. At around the seven hour mark, the expedition commander

After 1,856 Martian days among blue sunsets, sand dunes and small, lumpy moons, the Mars rover Curiosity sat on the ridge of an ancient lake bed and looked back on its five-year-long journey so far. NASA released a composite photo of what Curiosity saw in October this week, and if the rover could breathe,

After 1,856 Martian days among blue sunsets, sand dunes and small, lumpy moons, the Mars rover Curiosity sat on the ridge of an ancient lake bed and looked back on its five-year-long journey so far. NASA released a composite photo of what Curiosity saw in October this week, and if the rover could breathe,

Since the Universe is big and old, and life on Earth didn’t take relatively long to evolve, then life should be everywhere in the Universe. And yet, no matter how hard we look, we don’t see any evidence of it out there, not on Mars, not sending us radio messages, and not taking over entire

Since the Universe is big and old, and life on Earth didn’t take relatively long to evolve, then life should be everywhere in the Universe. And yet, no matter how hard we look, we don’t see any evidence of it out there, not on Mars, not sending us radio messages, and not taking over entire

A galaxy called Centaurus A has been harbouring a strange secret. Researchers have found a plane of dwarf galaxies orbiting it on a plane – much like planets do around stars, and even stars around galactic cores. This is not only really cool – it also challenges a long-held theory that dwarf galaxies hang

Saying our Universe is a big place is a bit of an understatement. And with recent advances in our understanding of the effects of dark matter and black holes on the formation of galaxies, it’s surprisingly dynamic. Keeping track of all of that material requires some impressive computing grunt and clever coding, which is

20 July 1969 was an unforgettable date in human history – the day Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the surface of the Moon, taking one small step for humans, and one giant leap for humankind. Between that fateful day and December 1972, NASA went back to the Moon five more times, conducting experiments and

20 July 1969 was an unforgettable date in human history – the day Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the surface of the Moon, taking one small step for humans, and one giant leap for humankind. Between that fateful day and December 1972, NASA went back to the Moon five more times, conducting experiments and

The world is about to witness a “super blue blood moon” on Wednesday morning, the first since September 2015. During this astronomical event, the full Moon will appear to turn red (a “blood moon”) as it travels through the ruddy shadow of Earth. The total lunar eclipse will look slightly larger than normal (a

Taking food up to space is costly, and growing food in orbit is difficult and time-consuming, which is why scientists are looking at the possibility of converting astronaut poop back into something edible. The thought may make you want to reach for the sick bag, but such a scheme could mean the difference between

Earlier this month, the New Zealand-based private spaceflight company Rocket Lab successfully delivered its first orbital payload. Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket released, along with three commercial satellites, an art installation-as-satellite called the Humanity Star. The satellite, a highly reflective 65-faced ball crafted of carbon fiber, will orbit Earth for nine months. Around October, its

During the early hours of January 31, there will be a full Moon, a total lunar eclipse, a blue moon and a supermoon – all at the same time. None of these things is really all that unusual by itself. What is rare is that they’re happening all together on one day. What makes

This year gets off to a relatively slow start when it comes to seeing the annual major meteor showers. The Quadrantids, one of the big three annual showers, are lost to the vagaries of the full Moon in early January. But the year’s other two most active annual showers – the Perseids (in August)

Through a project called Exoplanet Explorers, a band of citizen scientists has discovered K2-138, a far-off planetary system that houses least five exoplanets. This is the first time that a multi-planet system has been discovered entirely through crowdsourcing. UC Santa Cruz astronomer Ian Crossfield and Caltech staff scientist Jessie Christiansen launched the Exoplanet Explorers

As our stargazing abilities grow ever more advanced, astronomers have been finding more and more extrasolar planets. But there’s a lot of stuff swirling out in the Universe that falls somewhere in between, and one astrophysicist is calling for a formal definition on what being a planet really means. We know what makes a

Even NASA had disasters with its moon missions, so was it really fair to expect Mike Hughes to build a rocket, fly to space, and prove once and for all that the Earth is flat without a few hitches along the way? Hughes – a 61-year-old daredevil-turned-rocket-maker-turned-round-Earth-skeptic – intends to launch himself 52 miles

The surface of Mars is dry and arid now, but scientists suspect that wasn’t always the case – which raises the question of where all that water went. A new study suggests huge dust storms played a role in whipping all the moisture out of the Martian atmosphere. Based on an analysis of a

Shortly after NASA was established in 1958, the nation’s top scientists compiled a list of missions they thought the brand-new space agency should pursue. The proposals were heady, considering at that point only three satellites had ever been launched. Researchers suggested an Earth-orbiting telescope that could detect the universe’s most distant stars, probes that

Astronomers have been fascinated with globular clusters ever since they were first observed in 17th century. These spherical collections of stars are among the oldest known stellar systems in the Universe, dating back to the early Universe when galaxies were just beginning to grow and evolve. Such clusters orbit the centres of most galaxies, with

An asteroid larger than any skyscraper yet built is hurtling toward Earth, the Daily Mail informs. If it hits on February 4, the paper continues, scientists predict a decade of cold and darkness, skies choked with soot, and misery across the planet. Between these paragraphs, the Mail inserts occasional reminders that asteroid 2002 AJ129